Editing is essential. Through the act of editing, raw creative content can be refined into something elegant, effective and useful. The process of editing is a pivotal phase wherein content can gain the ability to serve a more meaningful purpose than simply existing.
The omnipresence of the Internet has made it so that anyone and everyone can contribute content to the web. Photos, video, music, text—the sheer quantity of content posted to the web, without any of the traditional “gate keepers” that used to serve as filters for public consumption, is astounding. This vast array of content means that now, more than ever, editors and their skill sets are necessary.
Eat Media muses on this topic in their excellent blog post, “Is Editing a Lost Art?”
They write, “We may have reached the point in the internet revolution where pervasive broadband access has made everyone a publisher, but this explosion of content providers—most of them roaring pell-mell down the information superhighway—has made the need for savvy editors ever more acute.”
The post proposes five main reasons that editors continue to be ever more valuable as the amount of content on the web increases: editing is a skill, editing is an art, editing takes time, editing takes care, editing is necessary.
This insight is salient, and relevant to all forms of content. It’s especially material, to me, in the realm of written content. Often times, web content does not appear to have been thoroughly challenged and improved by an editor, as it would have been if it were going to be printed. Just because web content isn’t inherently “permanent”, as it would be in a brochure or on a newspaper page, does not mean that it shouldn’t be held to the same rigorous standards as printed words.
Editing makes content better. As a writer, working with a good editor (and rigorously editing myself) makes my writing better. And for businesses who have already created their content, working with an experienced editor can make a perceptible difference in how your content is presented and received, and how effective the content is in reaching and influencing your audience. Just as you wouldn’t send out an un-edited mailing, look to an editor to make your content shine before posting it to the web.
